Travel, custody and relocation in Virginia
The passport rules are federal and read the same everywhere. This page is the other layer — what Virginia law and Virginia’s own court forms say about taking your child on a trip, moving, and who holds the passport between journeys.
See a different stateVirginia
Getting a child’s passport, consent letters, the Hague Convention and what actually stops a departure are the same in all fifty states — they are on the main travel page. Start there, then come back here for the part that varies.
Which court decides — and why a trip does not change it
Virginia custody jurisdiction sits under Va. Code Title 20, ch. 7.1 (§§ 20-146.1 to 20-146.38), “Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act”. The home-state definition is at Va. Code § 20-146.1 (definitions – “Home state”). The practical point for travel is this: a child’s home state is where they lived for six consecutive months before a case started, and a temporary absence counts toward that period. A summer with grandparents in another state does not start a clock there, and it does not let the other parent file somewhere new.
Abduction-prevention powers
Virginia has not enacted the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. No Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act appears in Virginia. The Title 20 (Domestic Relations) chapter index contains ch. 6.1 (Custody and Visitation Arrangements for Minor Children), ch. 7 (the repealed Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act) and ch. 7.1 (UCCJEA), and no abduction-prevention chapter. Treated as not enacted.
Moving, and how much warning you owe
The entire section: “In any proceeding involving custody or visitation, the court shall include as a condition of any custody or visitation order a requirement that thirty days’ advance written notice be given to the court and the other party by any party intending to relocate and of any intended change of address, unless the court, for good cause shown, orders otherwise. The court may require that the notice be in such form and contain such information as it deems proper and necessary under the circumstances of the case.” Note what this is and is not: it is a mandatory ORDER TERM the court must insert, not a standalone duty, and it obliges notice to the court as well as to the other party. It sets no mileage threshold, prescribes no contents, and does not by itself decide whether the move is permitted – that remains a best-interest modification question.
Governed by case law, not statute. No Virginia relocation case is named here because none was verified on a Virginia court site during this research.
Relocation and vacation are different questions, and orders often treat them in the same paragraph. A trip is temporary; a move changes the child’s residence. Read your own order for which one your plan actually is before you assume the relocation rule does not apply.
What the standard order says about travel
Virginia has no single statewide parenting order. Travel terms come from your own order and from local court rules, which vary by county or district. Read your order rather than a template.
Virginia has no statewide standard visitation order or model parenting plan setting default vacation blocks. Va. Code ch. 6.1 sets the best-interest factors (§ 20-124.3) and the joint/sole custody framework (§ 20-124.2) but prescribes no schedule, no vacation allotment, no itinerary requirement, no out-of-state or out-of-country travel clause and no passport term. The only travel-adjacent term Virginia mandates statewide is the § 20-124.5 thirty-day relocation/change-of-address notice, which the court must write into every custody or visitation order.
Who holds the passport
Nothing in Virginia’s statutes or standard forms addresses who holds the child’s passport. That is not a gap you have to live with — it is a clause you can ask for, and the federal rules above are the reason to.
What catches people out in Virginia
Sources for this page
- Custody jurisdiction statute: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/20-146.1/
- Abduction Prevention Act: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title20/
- Relocation rule: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/20-124.5/
- Statewide parenting form: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title20/chapter6.1/
Sources we could not reach when this page was built, recorded so you know what is missing rather than assuming it was checked: https://www.uniformlaws.org – renders enactment data only via JavaScript; no JS renderer available in this environment
Every fact above is taken from the source linked beside it. Where a figure could not be confirmed from an official source, this page says so rather than printing a plausible number. Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date.